THE unlawful operation of dump trucks, which are blamed for a growing number of road accidents, is being driven by the push for financial gain for truck companies and project contractors.

Six people died last weekend when a dump truck overturned, crushing the vehicle they were traveling in. The dump truck was reported to have been overloaded at the time of the accident.

Truck companies had to overload vehicles to make the business profitable, according to one owner of a truck company, who asked not be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“The market price of this business is too low for us to make money if we don’t overload our trucks. We have to violate the traffic rule to survive,” the owner was quoted by Thursday’s Daily Sunshine as saying.

He said a contractor often paid about 360,000 yuan (US$52,174) for a project to move 10,000 cubic meters of earth. But fuel alone would cost more than 200,000 yuan if his vehicles were not overloaded, the report said. Apart from the fuel, there were many other costs to cover including drivers’ wages. “In that case, the company barely makes any money.”

The owner said the truck companies usually had to pay “some people” a monthly fee for their vehicles to be allowed on the road. “They usually have a connection in the government and they can help you retrieve your vehicles if they are confiscated by traffic authorities,” he said.

To maximize their income, the truck companies require drivers to drive as fast as possible even though speeding is extremely dangerous. “We pay our drivers on a daily basis. If we can finish one project in five days by moving the trucks faster, we avoid finishing the task in six days.”

Speeding and overloading were also in the interest of the project contractors.

“The faster we can move the earth out of a project, the more we can save on costs,” said Wang Qiang, a contractor on a large construction project. Wang said he was sometimes given a bonus from a project developer if the project was completed ahead of schedule.

(Wei Jie)